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How we doin’ team?
It’s Friday. The sun is setting. The menu is set. You know what time it is. Friday Night Happy Hour time with @BitsTODAY. Grab a cocktail 🥃. Grab a coffee if it’s already morning in your time zone. Take a seat. And let us regale you with all the news across BitClout from the past 48 hours. Bing. Bang. 💥.
Guest cover designed by @motiongraphicscollective
Bits on the menu tonight:
- BuzzClout: views from block 50k by @prosperclout ⚡️
- Ubiquitous UX drops: the diamonds they are a changin’ 💎🎶
- NFT showcase: 🎨 highlighting some of BitClout’s finest NFTs
- Project in focus: @Cloutomy reveals BitClout’s creator economics 📈
- General absurdity: more like general generosity this week! ✨
Diamondhands’ drops 💎
#1 BuzzClout
Tonight, we’re excited to announce a very special guest… it’s @salilsethi and @prosperclout serving up the first round 🍺. What’s the drink special? It’s a concoction we call block 50,000, featuring all the numbers that the BitClout blockchain has run-up in its short existence. We hope you like it 😊:
#2 Ubiquitous UX drops: the diamonds they are a changin’ 💎🎶
Crazy to think we’ve only had NFTs on BitClout for a couple weeks. Already feels like its an engrained part of the experience; we can hardly remember life before our feeds were saturated with mediocre profile pic series (we kid, we kid… kind of).
In recent editions we’ve written a lot about what’s next on the roadmap for BitClout at a macro level, but there’s been little in the way of concrete changes this week. One that’s DEFINITELY coming? Diamonds, BitClout’s innovative, seamless tipping feature, are moving from being paid in the creator coin of the payer to being paid directly in $clout 💎💎💎.
On its surface this seems like a good thing. Receivers of diamonds get a reward for their content that’s more immediately liquid, which they can then go us to diamond other posts, buy creator coins, buy NFTs, take off platform to pay their utility bill, what have you 💎🔌.
However, there’s actually a lot of concern and consternation here. Why? Well, right now diamonds are one of the best ways for creators to use their creator coin. There’s a ton of stigma around selling investments in yourself; however, no one bats an eye when we ship our own creator coin to other creators via diamonds, even when we do so in size. That’s because it’s not guaranteed those diamond recipients will go sell your coin right away either. In sum, we are losing a great way to make use of our investments in our own coin.
With this change to how 💎s are paid, we actually may see people tighten the purse strings a lot and send less $clout around too. Flows of $clout may actually slow given this change rather than accelerate in the short-term. Here’s how one a-list clouter, @CyrusAbrahim, sees the issue:
At one point, a ‘switch’ was actually considered whereby users could decide how they wanted to pay out diamonds to other creators. Why didn’t that get implemented? We can always rely on @tijn to inject wisdom and nuance into a conversation. As he notes, there was plenty of time for the community to air concerns about this change or to ask for other features like the switch to also be included BEFORE this was all pushed live:
As @charlie points out, perhaps the bigger lesson we can all glean from this is that there needs to be 10x more visibility into governance and CIPs that are actively being considered by the dev community. Then, rather than bitch & moan when something gets pushed live, every clouter interested could have a seat at the decision-making table ✋🗳️. Maybe before we push any other major structural changes live, more visibility into CIPs (with a sleeker entry point) should be prioritized.
#3 NFT Showcase: 🎨 Highlighting some of BitClout’s finest NFTs
While some new solutions for browsing NFTs are coming online (shoutout @minted and @niftylist), we still think it can be valuable to scour the cloutiverse ourselves for some of the hottest NFTs still on auction 🥵. In particular, we’re deviating from the traditional profile picture focused stuff. That’s fun, but we’ve personally seen enough of it at this point :). Here are some other stellar NFTs we have our eyes on 🌟:
We’re suckers for anything that plays to futuristic visions of space and humanity’s future. We also love the style that @LaneDigitalArt brings to their drops; there’s clear digital art expertise here. Further, we always appreciate NFTs that advance the presence of finer art on BitClout. Checking all three boxes, we present @LaneDigitalArt’s ‘Calculated’, which is still on auction with a top bid of approximately ~5 $clout at current:
This one caught our attention given its ethos. @ThePixel openly challenges the NFT mania we’re in, not in a negative way, but to challenge us to consider a core question: “Why do we collect what we collect in the first place?” Rarity is obviously a key component. As is whether art resonates with us. @ThePixel is pushing these questions by releasing a series of artworks that are back to the basics — they feature a single pixel in space, with variation in the color and position of the pixel, as well as with the occasional glitch effects 🔲🟩⬜.
We love the use of NFTs as a conversation piece and thought experiment here. Check em’ out for yourselves:
@Rbnks
We’ve featured his work before (in edition 012 to be precise), but we simply love the work of Dutch digital artists Ruben Kos (@Rbnks). The attention to detail, the ethereal, futuristic, and sometimes post-apocalyptic landscapes… it all works together to transport us into entirely different dimensions when we encounter these NFTs on our feed. Currently, @Rbnks has three NFTs up for sale without crazy bidding wars — dare we say this is an underhyped talent ready to break out? 🌋🤔 We’ll let you all decide for yourselves.
#4 Project in focus: @Cloutomy reveals BitClout’s creator economics 📈
Ever wonder whether you’re actually any good at trading on BitClout? Or how much money you’ve made from your founder reward? Thanks to a massive push by the team over at @Cloutomy in response to a call from @diamondhands for an earnings analytics tool, you can explore all these stats for yourself at cloutomy.com. There might actually be too much info here, insofar as it's easy to go down a 🐰🕳️ and spend hours on the site. 💎🙌s himself knows this firsthand 😉:
@Cloutomy is also a beautifully designed reminder that the blockchain is public and immutable. Your stats are there for everyone to see. You can go see what any other creator’s wallet and trading history looks like, how much money they’ve made, from what sources, etc. For some this might be a bit uncomfortable, but as @diamondhands would say, in retrospect it was inevitable. Better we all get used to airing our laundry in public! 🧺
The @Cloutomy team was rewarded handsomely for their efforts. As is becoming a standard practice of sorts thanks to the generosity of @dharmesh, @diamondhands sent 1 $dharmesh coin to the @Cloutomy team for building the tool. That’s close to $13k of USD value today, and could easily be more in the future where $clout rises.
@Cloutomy… you buying a round for the bar tonight or whaaaa 🍾🥂.
#5 General absurdity: more like general generosity this week! ✨
One of the best things about BitClout? It’s a great place to celebrate wins. People are exploring their creativity. Making money. Building networks. While there’s some folks for whom its easier to detract rather than practice additive behaviors, these are few and far in between.
Another great thing about BitClout? The amount of generosity here is staggering. And it’s growing. In section #4, we already saw @diamondhands provide the @Cloutomy team with a $dharmesh coin for their development efforts 💪. Elsewhere? Check out this awesome story:
This is simply an awesome story of how hard work, network effects, frictionless financial transactions, and goodwill can all compound on BitClout. While @tijn rewarded @MrPreet for dev work (also with $dharmesh coin), the buck didn’t stop there. @MrPreet took the funds and turned them into high powered hardware 🖥️. Now? Indubitably @MrPreet can continue to contribute to the BitClout ecosystem even more efficiently.
Brick by brick, block by block, we’re laying the foundation for something special here, folks 🧱🔗🏗️. Take note from these enterprising gentlemen — the path to greatness can be paved in part by generosity. And with that, the final round of the night is on @BitsTODAY!
Thanks for spending time tonight, fam! Let us know how we’re doin, whether in the comments section of the article, in an email response, or on BitClout. Your feedback is super valuable 🤞.
🍻 Cheers,
@BitsTODAY
